aras diler

look at his eyes first. then look at that one tear.

that's the whole painting right there. he's crying and he's furious at the same time, and he refuses to choose. cabanel was only 24 when he painted this, and somehow he caught the exact moment after the fall. not the drama of falling. the quiet part after, when you're lying on the rocks and you have to decide who you are now.

notice he's covering his mouth with his arm. he won't speak. he won't apologize. above him the other angels fly off into the light, all graceful and blurry, basically faceless. down here he's the only one with an actual face. the only one who feels like a person.

philosophers have been circling this guy forever. camus would call him the rebel, the one who says no and becomes himself by saying it. kierkegaard would say this is despair: refusing to be what you were made to be, and refusing to stop being yourself either. both are kind of right, and that's why it's hard to look away.

anthropologists have a word for where he's stuck: liminal. the in between. every culture has rituals for it: you get cast out of the old world before you're allowed into a new one. most people come back changed. he's the version who never comes back. just stays at the threshold, forever, with the tear and the glare.

and the art part. old philosophy of beauty said a painting should make you admire goodness. this one does something sneakier. it makes you sympathize with the villain and then catches you doing it. the light is up there with the angels, but your eyes keep going back to the dark guy on the rocks. image

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the champions league anthem was inspired by music originally written for the coronation of british monarchs. which explains why a football match sometimes sounds like someone's about to become king.

it was created in 1992, with lyrics in english, french, and german.

and those eight stars in the famous logo? they were inspired by the original eight team group stage in 1992: ac milan, marseille, rangers, porto, psv eindhoven, club brugge, cska moscow, and ifk göteborg.

they basically took football, gave it royal ceremony music and a logo full of stars, and turned tuesday nights into something that feels like a historical event. image

flying car. image

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the bull fire is a pretty brutal reminder that reno’s wildfire season isn’t really over.

it started near verdi on october 2 and quickly spread through dry grass and brush, eventually burning into the hawk fire’s old burn scar.

what makes it especially crazy is that this is happening just weeks after the hawk fire devastated parts of northwest reno.

and now officials say bull fire was human-caused.

same landscape. same dry conditions. another fire. image

roald dahl had a weird talent for making children's stories feel magical and slightly disturbing at the same time.

charlie and the chocolate factory, matilda, the bfg, the witches. his stories were funny, dark, cruel, imaginative, and usually very suspicious of adults.

probably why they still feel different from most children's books. image

the bmw i8 still feels like a car that arrived 10 or 15 years too early. it came out in 2014 and somehow still looks gorgeous today. the design barely aged at all. my only issue is that i wish bmw had gone all in and made it fully electric instead of a plug in hybrid. it already looked like the future. the powertrain should have felt just as futuristic. imageimage

basically the banker behind emperors.

fugger made his fortune through mining, trade, and lending money to europe's most powerful families. in 1519, he personally financed around two thirds of the money used to support charles v's election as holy roman emperor.

but my favorite detail is what survived him.

in 1521 he founded the fuggerei in augsburg, now considered the world's oldest social housing complex still in use.

around 150 people still live there today.

annual rent: €0.88.

the other requirement is three prayers a day for the fugger family.

five hundred years later, one of the richest men of the renaissance is still technically somebody's landlord. image

one of the few celebrities who kept speaking up about gaza when so many others stayed quiet.

she has consistently used her platform to talk about palestinian children and humanitarian aid, which honestly makes me respect her even more.

and on top of all that, she is basically a superhero in my house because my daughter absolutely loves her. image

for a vacation, it’s hard to beat turkey. you spend a week or two seeing the best parts of the country and eating amazing food.

but when you are turkish and live abroad, there’s something strange about going back. people don’t really treat you like a local anymore. they see you as someone who’s just visiting, who’ll be leaving again soon, and you can feel it in the way they treat you.

you are coming home, but to everyone else, you’re just passing through. image

the university where we buried my daughter’s umbilical cord in the garden. image image

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people really underestimate american food. you always hear that the u.s. does not have great cuisine, but honestly, american bbq is some of the best food in the world.

and speaking of bbq, terry black's was one of the best meals i've ever had in my life.

the line was around 30 to 40 minutes, but completely worth it.

i paid about $150 for this tray three years ago. imageimage

america's mythical rabbit with antlers.

the funny part is that nature occasionally gets surprisingly close. a real virus can cause rabbits to grow hard, hornlike keratin growths around their heads. so the jackalope is fake, but biology apparently liked the idea. image